Rudi Voller didn't cover himself with glory for Germany in Euro 2000, of course. Mind you, he did sort of make up for it by getting to the World Cup Final two years later.
I mean, I'd be happy for someone to give me a breakdown of the failings of France in 2002 which contradicts this, but my take on it was that they were an XI of undroppables, showboating and resting on their laurels, and didn't realise until it was too late that they actually had to go out and fucking win a game. (You can blame the coach for that to a degree, but I still reckon this year's shambles is even worse.)
And, so as not to keep you in suspense, I'll tell you why.
The team of 2002 pretty much picked itself. The stars of '98 and '00 were still in their primes, and there were no controversial exclusions, no bright young talents knocking on the door. Sure, they underperformed, but you have to point the finger at the players themselves for that.
Whereas this year, with a France team still making room for the creaking bones of Thuram, Henry etc when several younger contenders couldn't even find a place in the squad, Domenech has to take all the blame.
I agree with that. France had motivational issues in 2002, but it was largely on the players. They waltzed into the tournament against a good Senegal team that was going to play the game of their lives. The motivational gap in this game might have been the largest in the history of World Cup groupplay openers. France was powerful but it had an achille's heal, that of being overly reliant on Zidane, who was injured in that tournament.
This edition of the French national team had a high upside, but it required careful and good managemenent on several levels: management of the generational transition, cutting some deadwood and nurturing younger replacements; tactical choices (attacking the Romania game as opposed to emphacizing not losing); good personnel selections; focus on the midfield and ball distribution; management of team cohesion and morale.
The margin was pretty narrow given the tightness of Group C. France did do realtively well under Domenech in 2006, but it turned out his margin had gotten a lot smaller in 2008. Under the circumstances, a really good coach could have taken France pretty far while a poor one like him have managed a spectacular crash.
linus, a barely competent coach would have picked a significantly different squad and played a radically different team. There are enough talented players who are qualified to play for France that one could potentially say that that group has an "upside", but the talent pool is not sufficiently deep, experienced or in sufficiently good condition for it to survive the caprices of a manager who is clearly deranged when it comes to assessing footballers (though he seems much more gifted in that area where women are concerned).
I think Domenech may well be the worst manager I have ever seen in charge of a big European national team, with the exception of Graham Taylor. He seems to take actual tangible delight in making hare-brained decisions and doing stupid things that fuck his team up.
This team were much worse than the 2002 side, who at least managed one very good performance against Uruguay and at no stage descended into the kind of chaos that we saw in the first half last night, when Italy came close to scoring six or seven times in the space of 20 minutes.
Roger Lemerre fucked up by selecting Leboeuf and Dugarry, but there were no blindingly obvious instances of people he left at home but should have brought, with the arguable exception of Eric Carriere of Lyon. (Pires didn't make the squad because he was injured.)
2002 was very bad but this is in a different league. Domenech is such a poor judge of talent that he thought Vieira, Govou, Clerc and Boumsong were worth having in his squad while Flamini, Ben Arfa, Sagna and Sylvain Distin weren't. He's a total fool.
Of course, Germany's efforts at Euro 2004, when Voller was the coach, weren't much better than those four years before.
Völler achieved in 2004 exactly what every reasonable observer of football expected them to achieve.
While I did not think that France would qualify for the quarter finals, I expected them to be a lot less feeble. I don't think they'd have got out of groups A or B.
I always forget about Ribbeck. Probably on account of how terrible his team were in Euro 2000. Let's make sure the same fate does not befall Domenech. Keep his message alive!
I don't know how much is just due to the mercurial nature of France. You're dealing with a country that had some great runs during the 50s, then dropped off the face of the earth. Then voila! they shoulda coulda won World Cups 82 & 86, then dropped off the face of the Earth until one day voila! - They're champions of the World ! Then Champions of Europe !
Then they laid the biggest egg of them all.
Then got knocked out by the Greeks.
Then voila ! - they're a few pks from being World Champs again !
Then they stink up the joint again.
Whether or not it's the worst managerial job of all-time, I don't know.
I mean the thing about the Euros is that they don't really matter. They matter, but not as much. Maybe no one really gave a shit.
The Confed Cup doesn't matter whatsoever. I'll say that the Euro doesn't matter as much as the World Cup, which is obvious.
During the knockout stages, World Cup losers are remembered more than European Cup winners. I'm just saying when teams bottle it in the Euros, it seems like they're saying "eh, at least there's World Cup qualifying coming up." When teams bottle it in the World Cup, it's usually due to fear and pressure.
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